UI vs. Protocol: No clear boundary (was: Re: Consensus Call on Latin Sharp S and Greek Final Sigma)

["Martin J. Dürst"]

Hello Patrik,

On 2009/11/30 3:51, Patrik Fältström wrote:

> For long term, we must move potential mappings to the UI,
 > as a help for the one looking up domain names.
 > Further away from the actual use of domain names in protocols.
 > Away from for example the existing confusion regarding comparisons
 > when using certificates, DNs when being used in various protocol
 > parameters etc.

I don't disagree with this. But there is one big problem:

Overall, there is no boundary line between what is "user interface" and 
what is "protocol element". In particular, Web page authors type (which 
means user input, i.e. "user interface") IRIs (and therefore IDNs) 
directly into a Web page, at which point (inside HTML) they become 
protocol elements. Nobody is there to pull these out and filter them and 
map them if necessary.

The ideal answer to this might be "well, once the browsers don't map 
anymore, the authors will learn their lesson". Unfortunately, the 
current tendency of (at least some) of the browser makers seems to be to 
want to include all the IDNA2003 mappings, including those that 
essentially remove some IDNA2008 PVALID codepoints (the ones we are 
discussing in this thread), and then some (essentially all IDNA2003 
style mappings extended to IDNA2008).

Regards,   Martin.

-- 
#-# Martin J. Dürst, Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-# http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp   mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp